Saturday, April 15, 2017

Update 6-14-18: In the last couple of days it has been revealed that we now have hard evidence that the West Antarctic ice sheet is destabilizing, the same sort of way that the Greenland ice sheet has been destabilizing.

In the past I have used these estimates of sea level rise for the various sources of ice: mountain glaciers 1 m, Greenland 6 m, West Antarctica 7 m, and East Antarctica 20+ m, plus "several more" meters for thermal expansion as the ocean warms. Sea ice contributes zero, it is already floating.

The thermal expansion effects are delayed, while ice losses are more immediate. The ice losses listed are associated with those rises only if 100% of that source of on-land ice fully melts.

In the past, I have treated the melting of mountain glacier ice as "already underway", and Greenland as "getting started", with West Antarctica and East Antarctica "still stable". I have assumed only 50% melting, for 50% of 1 + 6 meter = 3.5 meter sea level rise, on a gut-feel time scale of 50 to 100 years.

Such a rise would be devastating to civilization, since more than half the world's people, and the majority of its immovable assets, are within 3.5 m of current sea level.

Now I have to include West Antarctica. 50% of 1+6+7 meters = 7 meters of sea level rise on a gut-feel time scale of 50-100 years. You need to think "crash of civilization", in which case agriculture reverts to primitive methods, and 90% of us must perish. If you have to ask why, you're far dumber than you think.

In the past I have said that we are probably already past a tipping point for human-caused climate change, which renders mitigation efforts only a delaying tactic. If that is so, we'd better start figuring out how to cope. Not much of that is yet going on. What is, is looking at fractional-meter rise. And that's wrong.

With West Antarctica now known to be destabilizing, I am now personally sure we are past the tipping point. This WILL happen, and much sooner than anyone thinks! We now have very little time left to figure out how to cope with 7 meters (about 23 feet) of rapid sea level rise. In only 50 to 100 years, and then doubling again due to thermal expansion in the following century.

So, whether you believe on human-caused climate change or not, I recommend that you read on, anyway.

If you cannot be persuaded by actual data, then there is no hope for you. You deserve the fate that awaits you. And most of you will live long enough to see it begin. And begin it already has.

This is an issue that has become politicized to the
extreme, which precludes rational
action. What I present here has absolutely zero to do with ideologies or
politics. It is simple logic and common
sense.

There are two things to consider, but only one available choice. Whether humans cause global warming or not is
not a matter of choice, it is
something decreed by nature, which does
not tell us which is true. Our only
choice is whether or not to act,
based on what we do know.

What we know is this:
(1) there is a huge volume of ice on Earth located above sea level, (2) if even some of it were to melt, sea levels would rise sharply, (3) added heat melts ice, and (4) most of our critical institutions and
a major fraction of our population live in the zone threatened with flooding.

What portends here is a disaster far exceeding the temporary
flooding of a city by a hurricane, or
the migration of millions out of Syria and Africa to escape war. What could happen is the forced migration
of billions, and (nuclear) war
over failing food resources. So,
this decision is important to get “right”.

Filling Out The
Decision Matrix

One simple way to decide this is by a version of the trade
study matrix, a pretty standard
tool. However many choices you have is
the number of columns (in this example 3),
however many versions of the unknown natural issue there might be is the
number of rows (in this example 2). That
gives you a 6-hole pigeon-hole matrix to fill in with likely consequences.

There are two rows because human emissions might, or might not,
cause global warming. You do not
get to choose between them; this is
decided by nature, not humans.

There are three columns instead of two, because if we decide to act, there’s two ways this action might turn
out. There is only one, if we choose not to act. Acting versus not acting is the choice
available to us. If we act and it
doesn’t work, we’d better already be
working on how to cope (the third column).

As for the consequences,
they need not be detailed, and it
is OK to exaggerate them for better contrast.

If we choose to act,
we will spend lots of money to act, and there will be monetary losses, too.
These costs could range from significant (damaged economies) to
catastrophic (going back to the stone age).
That variation doesn’t matter,
just fill in all four “choose to act” cells with “lose $$”.

If we choose not to act,
then the consequences depend upon what nature does not tell us: whether or not human-caused global warming is
real. If not real, there will be no meltdown, no sea level rise, no migrations, no war,
and no money lost. If real, all those things will happen, and both money and lives will be lost (at
catastrophic levels).

That fills in all 6 cells with consequences. 5 of the 6 involve lost money, there is no avoiding that. 1 of the 6 involves life loss as well as loss
of money; that one is really bad. 1 of the 6 has no bad consequences in it at
all.

Now We Must Choose

You cannot choose which row you want (political ideologies
notwithstanding). You can only choose
a column! The standard way to use
the matrix is to pick the outcome that you cannot abide, and then cross out the entire column that
contains it.

In this example,
losing lives is to be avoided, which
rules out choosing not to act. This valuing
of lives over money is in accordance with the teachings of all 3 Abrahamic
religions in the West. Most of the Eastern
religious traditions agree.

That result says: act, and be prepared ahead of time to cope, if your initial action fails.

Did you notice that not once did I refer to any of the
prognostications or temperature history data of the climate science community? I didn’t need it to make this decision. I need it only to help define the
actions we might take to mitigate this threat:
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And, there is another
independent science dataset that says the same thing: observed ice melting behavior as the fossil
fuel-guzzling population has exploded.
Getting the same answer by two independent means lends a lot of confidence
to that answer.

Update 4-23-17: Sources of Real Data to ConsiderThere are ice core data that cover atmospheric composition during the ice ages and the warm periods in between. This is based on the actual composition of the ancient air trapped in the bubbles in the ice. The atmosphere is mixed well enough that this composition is not restricted to polar regions, it is global. These can be dated by the layers, similar to tree ring dating. Here is that data for atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 400,000 years, obtained right off a NASA website:

You can see the 4 dips to 180-200 ppm at the height of each of the 4 main glaciations of the ice age. We know when these glaciations occurred from the timing of the evidence in the rocks: they show marks of glacier passage, and the debris left behind on melting. Note that it never got above about 280-290 ppm during the deglaciated warm intervals. Ancient is to the left, modern is to the right. You can even see the little "wiggle" in the curve at about 260 ppm about 10,000 years ago that is the sudden cool-down they call the "Younger Dryas". From 180 ppm to 290 ppm encompasses atmospheric composition all the way between fully glaciated to fully warm. Correlation does not establish causality, that has to come from elsewhere (such as basic demonstrable physics). So, is something else going on? Such as Milankovitch orbital cycles?The thing we have that best models the cycling of the ice ages is Milankovitch orbital cycles. This is not really a fully causal model, except for the notion that more sunlight striking northern hemisphere land leads to warmer conditions globally. It pretty much correlates with the advance and retreat of the ice; not perfect, but very, very good. It is limited; for one thing, the distribution of continents was different millions of years ago. The basic physics is simple: ice melts if heated. The Earth's "average" temperature is an energy balance between lots of visible and ultraviolet light coming from the sun, and some heat of radioactive decay and original formation escaping from the interior, versus the infrared heat re-radiated back out into space by the warmth of the Earth's surface. And, extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere interferes with that re-radiation, because it is less transparent to infrared than oxygen and nitrogen, so the surface must warm further to radiate against the resistance of the carbon dioxide.You can verify this effect for yourself without actually doing sophisticated measurements: simply set two bell jars covering thermometers out in the sun at the same time. One has air, the other you fill with carbon dioxide (the extreme case). Both thermometers rise. But, the carbon dioxide-filled jar's thermometer will read a lot higher than the air-filled jar's thermometer. Both are "greenhouses", but the carbon dioxide gas is far more potent as such than oxygen and nitrogen in the air. Another version of that very same chart I obtained from Wikipedia, to which an inset was added showing atmospheric composition over only the last few centuries. This makes the point that our unburying of carbon-containing fossil fuels and releasing it as exhaust gas carbon dioxide, has had effects since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and really sharp effects in the last 5 decades as our population explodes exponentially.

If you look on much longer time scales, there are other things going on as well. On a time scale of 100 million years, the astrophysicists tell us the sun has brightened by 4% or thereabouts. On a 4.6 billion year time scale, they tell us it has brightened by about 30%. Before about 380 million years ago, there was no life on land. Before 600 million years ago, there was only single cell life in the ocean. Before about 2.5 billion years ago, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. And who knows what the surface air pressure was during those times (which also affects how good a "greenhouse" it makes)?All we know is that there more carbon dioxide half a billion years ago than in "recent" times (only the couple of million years). The sun was dimmer, and yet the geology indicates ice-free conditions. This chart was published a few years ago in the refereed journal "Science", published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It's based on atmospheric composition inferred from rock chemistry, and it's pretty good back to the Cambrian, 570 million years ago. Much before that, it's inherently rather speculative, which explains the scale change representing time. These are indirect measures, which explains the lack of scale tick marks on carbon dioxide concentrations, which were roughly around 1000 to 2000 ppm during the Mesozoic. Update 4-25-17:What the long-term carbon dioxide and temperature chart makes clear is twofold. (1) Carbon dioxide fluctuations do not cause ice ages, because there was little change in level during the Pleistocene Ice Ages, and carbon dioxide levels were much higher during the earlier ice ages. (2) Carbon dioxide in the air does indeed warm the planet, as evidenced by ice-free intervals at high carbon dioxide earlier in Earth's history, when the sun was significantly dimmer. Something else causes ice ages. Many things, this is poorly understood. There have been many of these ice age events over geologic time: the Pleistocene event we are most familiar with, the Jurassic-Cretaceous event, an event between the Carboniferous and the Permian, another between the Ordovician and the Silurian, and who-knows-what during Pre-Cambrian times.

Climate-Modeling
Science

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that
humans are causing major effects with greenhouse gas emissions. They arrive at this conclusion with a
combination of (1) computer modeling of climate, and (2) various proxies for past temperature
data earlier than historical measurements.

There is inherently a lot of uncertainty in the computer modeling, and a lot of inference in the proxies for
past temperatures (unlike the ice core data for atmospheric composition). There is potential
for error, disagreement, and even fraud. Many folks outside the community are uncomfortable
with that, and this is the weakness
exploited by those who prefer to disbelieve that we are causing climate
change.

Ice Melting Behavior

Ice behavior is unambiguous.
The mountain glaciers have been generally receding since the 19th
century. Now there are enormous summer sea
ice losses, and thousands of summer
meltwater lakes on Greenland, that we
have never seen before! The co-timing of
these symptoms with the increases in measured atmospheric carbon dioxide to
unprecedented levels since 1958, is
quite damning.

There is a documentary film available in whole or in part on
Youtube named “Chasing Ice”. It was made
by James Balog as part of his Extreme Ice Survey (EIS). The award-winning film was first shown in
2013. The time lapse photography of many glaciers' melt-back in the last 30 minutes of that film makes my point better
than any words.

Trade Study-Recommended
Actions

The mitigation action to take first is to cut back carbon
dioxide and methane emissions as fast as we can, but without hurting or killing somebody for
lack of energy, which limits how fast we can do this. The coping action to take in case mitigation
fails is twofold: (1) start stockpiling
foodstuffs, and (2) to start moving
critical institutions and assets to much higher ground.

Any other “geo-engineering” activities we
contemplate must be reversible,
because we simply do not know that they will do more good than
harm. If they do not work, we have to be able to undo them.

It is that simple. And it is that stark. And, it
has absolutely nothing to do with politics or ideology. Those who claim otherwise are lying to
you. Follow the money to see who and
why.

Previous Related
Article on this Topic

There was one earlier article that I wrote on this
topic, which the current article updates
and replaces. That was “On Global
Warming”, dated 1-12-2010, and sharing the same search keywords you can
use to filter searches for this topic on this site: "bad government", “bad manners”, “climate change”, and “idiocy in politics”. That older article was last updated in 2014
to show a simpler 4-cell version of the 6-cell trade study matrix presented
here. It now refers the reader to this article.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Both of these rogue nations are pursuing ballistic missiles
tipped with atomic weapons. They have
made enough progress that we should be seriously concerned, especially in the case of North Korea. Action is required now with North Korea, and very,
very soon with Iran.

North Korean Progress

North Korea has made enough progress toward atomic weapons
that they have been testing such weapons underground for several recent
years. They have been doing this for
enough years to have at least begun (and possibly completed) the necessary
miniaturization of the atomic weapons, so
as to fit a more ordinary-sized rocket.
It is the rocket that is still giving them problems, so that many rocket flight tests have been
made recently.

Update 8-8-17: today's reports indicate the miniaturization of the warhead is sufficient to fit the existing new rocket. In turn, the rocket appears to be flying well enough to serve.

There are 4 things the North Koreans require, in order to strike a mainland US city with a
blast weapon: (1) a miniaturized atomic
bomb, (2) a reliable launch rocket, (3) a heat shield for the warhead to survive
re-entry, and (4) guidance precise
enough to actually hit fairly close to the intended target (both detonation
altitude and miss distance are important).

Update 8-8-17: the recent flights of this rocket are just what is needed to test heat shields and guidance systems. Those also seem to be working. It would appear that all 4 needed items are now in place for a real ICBM capability capable of hitting the continental US.

There are only two of these needed to damage us severely
with the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) of a nuclear explosion in near space. To do that requires only the bomb and the
rocket; the precision guidance and a
heat shield are unnecessary.

If they have not successfully miniaturized their atomic bomb
yet, they will within a year or two at
most. By then, their rocket should also be flying
reliably. That means we are credibly at
risk “right now”, and very most certainly
within a year or two. It is now past time
to put an end to their efforts.

Update 8-8-17: the way to put a stop to this threat is to start shooting down everything they launch. I do not know if any of the anti-missile systems we have can actually do this. They are really intended for use in the terminal target area. But if they cannot, then we have been paying far too much for the wrong kind of weapons.

Iranian Progress

Iran already has the rocket “in hand”: they have launched satellites into
orbit. Our own history shows that any
satellite launcher can fly sub-orbitally with a larger payload. That payload can easily be a miniaturized
atomic weapon.

That is why Iran’s main effort in recent years was toward those
atomic weapons. Like North Korea, they could do us great damage with only the
rocket and bomb as an EMP attack. With a
heat shield and precision guidance, they
could also do a blast weapon attack.
Those last two components are easier to do, than the miniaturized bomb and the rocket, and easier to conceal.

The nuclear “deal” with Iran has temporarily slowed (perhaps
even halted, but I really doubt that)
Iran’s uranium fuel program. We have
already seen them highly-enrich uranium,
something unnecessary to run a power reactor. Highly-enriched uranium is only bomb
material, simple as that.

However, not often
considered in the news reports is the fact that even low-enriched uranium can
be used in a modified reactor design that breeds plutonium from the
non-fissionable leftovers from the uranium enrichment process. Plutonium makes even better bomb material, although how you set it off is different from
highly-enriched uranium. But, how you set off either is publicly-available
knowledge!

The upshot of that is that any country who can build
reactors that use low-enriched uranium,
can also breed plutonium and make plutonium-based atomic bombs! The Iran nuclear deal does NOT prevent that
from happening! From that point, all that is required is miniaturization of
the atomic bomb to fit the rocket. And
Iran already has the rocket!

It might take Iran a single-handful of years to build
plutonium bombs and get them miniaturized successfully. At that point, they can successfully strike us with atomic
bombs. It is therefore pretty-much time
to put an end to their efforts,
too.

Update 8-8-17: no change to that assessment.

What Could We Do
About North Korea?

North Korea has a weakness we can exploit as a unilateral
action: their rocket is still unready to
fly their atomic bombs. Stop the rocket
tests, and you can still stop their
capability to hurt us, at least for a
while. Longer-term, there must be regime change in North
Korea, or else this threat will never go
away.

We have various battlefield and longer-range anti-missile
and anti-satellite weapons. Some of
these seem to work, at least under
restricted circumstances. With all of
them, there is still credible doubt
about their efficacy during general warfare.
But what we need here is only efficacy in a restricted circumstance: shooting down every test rocket launch
conducted by North Korea, for the
forseeable future.

That is exactly what I propose as the initial step against
North Korea: shoot down every single test
missile they launch. This has two
effects: (1) North Korea cannot verify
their rocket to be reliable, at least
for the short term, and (2) it shows
China we are very, very serious about
taking unilateral action if they do not rein in their protégé state.

Update 8-8-17: now only one thing can be accomplished - to show China we are very serious. North Korea has completed most of the minimal test and development work to have an ICBM that can hit the US. Reports do indicate China is going along with sanctions. It is past time to discuss regime change in North Korea with China. Whom would they prefer?

In the longer term,
we will need the help of China to resolve this situation. They are the source of imports and support
that actually keeps the rogue state of North Korea alive and functional. It is in China’s interest as well as ours
that there not be a failed state in North Korea. Further,
there is some reason to believe that the Kim dynasty in North Korea has
limited days left. When it ends, chaos is the most likely result, unless a major power steps in.

But, I rather doubt
that China might support reunification of the Koreas under the government of
South Korea, even though that would be a
favorable outcome for them and for us. So, the
realistic prospect is that there will still be two Koreas indefinitely into the
future. The “trick” is getting China
itself to replace the paranoid Kim dynasty with something more sane and more tolerable,
to us and to them.

What Could We Do
About Iran?

This is by far the tougher problem to solve.

Iran has the rocket,
but they do not yet have the bomb to ride that rocket. It is only a matter of a very few years
before they do have the miniaturized bomb,
despite the nuclear deal. Whether
they cheat on the deal, or not, makes no real difference.

The exact locations of all their nuclear facilities are too
uncertain for us to strike, and those we
do know precisely, are buried deep
underground. Conventional weapons simply
cannot take them out; only a
ground-penetrating nuclear strike could do this job. The world will not condone that.

Like North Korea,
Iran is ruled by extremists who policy objectives are demonstrably
insane by any standards that we in the west understand. In that respect, they differ in no practical way from
ISIS, Al Qaeda, or the Taliban.

Unlike North Korea,
Iran has no major power as a “sponsor” to keep them functional. In point of fact, Iran is a major regional power all on its
own, complete with proxy armies
(Hezbollah, Hamas, and some others) to do its bidding to spread
chaos everywhere.

Diplomacy (the nuclear deal) has slowed the problem only a
little, but definitely has not stopped
it. Short of nuclear genocide, there is little we the US can unilaterally
do, or even do with multiple allies. Yet something must be done, and all the Iranians’ neighbors agree. The people of Iran are actually good and
decent folk; they do not deserve nuclear
extinction. But their government certainly
does!

This one is a real “rock-and-a-hard-place” problem. About the only hope I can offer is that
diplomacy with Iran might be more effective, if we have already made an example of North
Korea. And also perhaps of their
co-supported (with Russia) puppet: Assad
in Syria.

To that end: put an
end to Kim Jong Un in North Korea, then
make sure Bashar Assad in Syria dies for conducting chemical warfare
attacks. Target him (instead of
airfields) with cruise missiles. Let the
Russians install whomever they want in Syria to replace him, but we must be sure Assad dies. Period.

Update 8-8-17: no change to this assessment.

That is a very difficult prescription indeed, but it must be done! After it is done, both us and the Russians may actually benefit. And those extremists ruling Iran may be more
tractable.

Maybe. Maybe
not. No guarantees.

GW

Previous Related
Articles That This Article Supersedes:

date, search keywords
article title

4-6-09, North Korean Rocket test

Thoughts on the North Korean Rocket
Test And
Beyond

12-13-12, current events, North Korean rocket test

On the 12-12-12 North Korean
Satellite Launch

2-15-13, Mideast threats, North Korean rocket test

Third North Korean Nuclear
Test

4-5-13, current events, North Korean rocket test
North Korean Threat
Overblown, So Far

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Update 5-4-17: They've done it again, this time launching a recon satellite for the military, and once again they successfully recovered the first stage booster for reuse. This was their first launch in the launch business sector that was previously a de-facto monopoly for ULA. Original Article:

Spacex’s seemingly-routine successful launch on 30 March 2017, of a satellite to geosynchronous transfer
orbit is a bigger deal than it first seems.
The Falcon-9 first stage booster rocket was a used item landed
before, and now landed again.

This has never-before been done with a rocket capable of
reaching orbit. It portends a near-term dramatic
drop in launch costs to space, but only if
the technology proves out the way hoped.

Reusable launch to orbit is more demanding than reusable launch
into suborbital flight. This is because
the conditions when the used stage returns to the atmosphere are far harsher
for an orbital launcher.

In the suborbital arena,
it isn’t widely publicized yet,
but Blue Origin has flown and landed the same New Shepard booster rocket
some 5 times now. That, too,
has never before been done.

More To Come

There’s more reusable firsts waiting in the wings. Virgin Galactic’s “Spaceship Two”, and XCOR Aerospace”s “Lynx”. Both are reusable suborbital spaceplanes for
the tourist industry.

There is also Sierra Nevada’s orbital “Dreamchaser”
spaceplane, which is undergoing its
initial tests. And, Spacex’s “Dragon” capsules were designed from
the beginning to be re-used.

Blue Origin does plan to enter the orbital market with its
New Glenn rocket, which is to be
reusable. That activity is just
beginning: the new big engine for it has
begun ground testing.

Spacex plans to fly soon a much larger reusable rocket called
Falcon-Heavy, that is based on its
Falcon-9 hardware. As I understand
it, the first flight of Falcon Heavy is
deferred, until pad 40 at Cape Canaveral
is repaired after last year’s explosion.
This is wise, because a problem
test-flying Falcon-Heavy off of pad 39 then cannot stop commercial Falcon-9
launches off pad 40.

Spaceship Two is about to resume flight testing after an
accident in test a while back. It will carry
about half a dozen passengers, and a
crew of two pilots. It is launched from
a large carrier plane.

Lynx is smaller: one
passenger, one pilot. But it simply takes off from a runway, flies into space, and returns to that runway, perhaps up to 4 times per day. The first flight test article is nearing
completion.

A Look Behind the
Curtain

What is so remarkable about all this is not so much what
is being done, but who is doing
it! Not one of those names is part of
the industry that worked with NASA or the USAF all these decades, which is sometimes called “old space”. This is entirely what we might call “new
space”.

That is not to say that these “new space” companies don’t
work with NASA or USAF, because many
do. Spacex has NASA contracts to deliver
cargo with its Dragon to the space station,
as does Orbital ATK with its Cygnus.

Spacex has a NASA contract to develop a crewed variant of “Dragon”
to deliver astronauts to orbit, as does
Boeing with its CST-100 “Starliner” capsule.
Sierra Nevada’s “Dreamchaser” spaceplane was also contracted by NASA for
this, got dropped for a while, but may now get contracted again.

NASA and USAF are also interested in Blue Origin’s New Glenn
orbital rocket, especially the engines
that will push it. These engines may be
candidates for a follow-on launch rocket to the Atlas-V, that both agencies routinely buy from the
Boeing / Lockheed-Martin venture ULA (United Launch Alliance).

And Spacex now has contracts from USAF to launch some of its
satellites. Before, only ULA had any of that business. (See update 5-4-17 above.)

Why This Is Happening

What broke this market open for “new space” entrants was their
lower prices. And that came from
competition in the commercial satellite launch business, something neither NASA nor USAF does. These American companies and a variety of
foreign companies all had to learn how to reduce price, competing in that growing commercial satellite
business.

Up to now, the “secret”
was simplification of the logistical “tail” that supports production and flight
of these rockets as expendable vehicles.
Reducing that support tail from the size of a major city to the size of a
small town reduced the “typical” per-launch price from many hundreds of
millions of dollars to only several tens of millions of dollars: almost a factor of 10.

Reusability promises to reduce that by at least another
factor of 10! Maybe more!

It is fundamentally the large size of the commercial
satellite launch market that can support so many companies competing in
it. That has taken decades to grow. But the competition that is inherent with
many companies is what spurs the innovation that cuts costs, allowing lower prices.

Consolidation into one,
or a few, stops that
competition. That kills downward
pressure on prices, and thus
dis-incentivizes innovation.

Amazing what the truly-competitive market can do for
you, given time and opportunity.

Followers

About Me

"GW" is an aerospace engineer and a teacher, with considerable experience in both professions. He is currently looking for a little consulting, but is now retired.
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He has done both automotive and aircraft alternate fuel work. The photo is of GW in his "ethanol VW", which runs on straight E-85. It is now mothballed, but his antique farm tractor runs on E-85, and just about everything else on E-30 to E-35 blend.
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GW sells, and now rents out, cactus-killing farm implements. He builds these in his shop out on the Texas Idea Farm.